Donald Trump and H-1B: A reality check on what he says and does

Donald Trump has weighed in on a topic that is being debated among his supporters – the role of skilled immigrant workers in the United States economy. The president-elect said he had frequently used the visas for those workers and supported the program.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

However, in reality, Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program. It allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the US for up to three years, and can be extended to six years.

A reality check on what Donald Trump says and does

Trump has actually more frequently used the H-2B visa program, meant for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, and the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. These visas allow workers to stay in the country for as many as 10 months. According to federal data, the president-elect’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past two decades, The New York Times reported.

The outlet reported that the Trump transition team did not provide clarity on the type of visas Trump was referring to in the New York Post interview. However, it responded to a prior query about Trump’s position on work visas by sharing the text of a speech made by him in 2020. The response noted that “Americans must never lose sight of this miraculous story.” Trump, while campaigning back in 2016, said the H-1B program was “very bad for workers” and stressed that “we should end it.”

However, many in the tech industry , including Elon Musk’s followers, hailed Trump’s Saturday interview. Ian Miles Cheong, a social media influencer, posted on X, “Donald Trump backs Elon Musk on H-1B visas.”

Musk, who came into the country on an H-1B visa, being a naturalised citizen born in South Africa, has often stressed how important he thinks visas are due to a lack of American citizens capable of doing the work tech companies require. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he wrote on Christmas Day on X.

The Department of Labor oversees both the H-1B and H-2 programs, and imposes different rules for each. At present, the skilled worker program has a cap of 65,000 per year. H-2B visas, on the other hand, are capped at 66,000. H-2A visas have no caps but are limited to certain sectors of the industry.

Trump’s companies were approved for over 1,000 H-2 visas for jobs like cooks, housekeepers and waiters at his properties from 2003 to 2017, including at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, according to Labor Department data. The companies in all of these cases had to attest that there were no American citizens who could perform these jobs.

Even during Trump’s first presidential term, his companies continued to hire H-2 workers. For instance, they posted applications for visas for as many as 78 housekeepers, cooks and food servers at Mar-a-Lago in mid-2018.

The most recent H-1B application was posted in 2022 by Trump Media & Technology Group, looking for a “product data analyst” with a salary of $65,000. It is unclear if the position was filled. The president-elect's winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, is looking for 31 foreign vineyard farmworkers under the H-2A program at present. They are being offered $15.81 per hour.